Eden Lost (Eden Rising Trilogy Book 2) Page 15

  “Can’t disagree with you. How about Florida? Soak up some sun on the beaches. It’s not West, but it’s a long way from here.”

  “Let’s do it. Leave in the a.m.?”

  “Sounds good. How about we take a detour and stop by and see the women, then go south from there?”

  They were on the road bright and early, and the next day were driving down the suburban street in Western New York about a mile from their destination.

  And then the earthquake hit. The last of the three. The final screw in the total devastation of the United States. It hit fast and hard. One minute they were enjoying the sun on their faces and the wind in their hair, and the next a gaping hole opened up in front of them, partially swallowing the car. Sean smacked his head against the steering wheel and Aaron sailed over the windshield and landed on the hood of the car. Since the car was at an angle in the hole, he rolled down the hood and landed hard on the pavement.

  The ground was still shaking, and Aaron observed houses on both sides of the street collapsing in on themselves. Finally, it stopped and Aaron unsteadily picked himself up off the ground. Nothing was broken, just some scrapes. He quickly checked on Sean, who was moaning. He pulled him out of the car and set him down on some grass, then retrieved their backpacks and guns. By the time he got back to his friend, he was sitting up holding his head.

  “What the fuck! Look at my car!”

  Aaron pulled some antiseptic and a bandage from one of the backpacks. As he was applying the antiseptic, Sean yelled, “Ow! Shit, that hurts.”

  “Shut up you weenie and let me do my job.”

  “Bite me.”

  In five minutes, Sean was standing up with a white bandage wrapped around his head. “We need to check on the girls.”

  They double-timed it down the road and reached the yard in a few minutes. The house was a pile of rubble. Something inside—probably the woodstove—had started a fire, and the flames were reaching into the sky. They quickly determined that whoever had been in the house had probably been killed by the quake. If not, the fire would have consumed them.

  And then they saw her. Looking as pitiful as the day she'd run into Sean was Brittany, sitting alone on the grass, her head in her hands.

  “Brittany!” called out Sean.

  She looked up in surprise and burst into tears when she saw them. She got to her feet and ran to them, almost unseeing through her tears, and latched herself to Sean.

  Aaron called out over the roar of the inferno that was the house, “Brittany, are the others in there?”

  She nodded her head weakly and sank further into Sean’s arms.

  Hours later, Brittany was able to talk about it. Aaron and Sean had set up a tent on the front lawn, the smoldering house serving as extra warmth on a night that had turned chilly. Aaron was cooking some beef stew while Sean sat with Brittany.

  She was in the outhouse in the backyard when the quake hit. The flimsy building disintegrated around her and she was thrown to the grass. The back of the main house had already collapsed, so she ran around to the front, arriving in time to see the whole house implode.

  “I could hear them screaming,” she said in a monotone. “I wanted to help them, but I couldn’t. Then the screaming stopped. Right after that, the fire started. It just all happened … so fast.”

  She fell asleep a few minutes later.

  “Well that changes things,” said Aaron, after she had fallen asleep clutching Sean’s leg for comfort.

  “Gotta bring her with us.”

  “Of course. Just thinking about the quake. One that size would’ve affected things halfway down the east coast …”

  “And you’re thinking it’s not going to be any easier heading south than it would be to go west,” interrupted Sean.

  “Something like that.”

  “More cities to try to wade through, too.”

  “I like the wide open spaces out west,” said Aaron.

  “Why are we even bothering to discuss it? I think we’ve both made up our minds. West it is.”

  They packed up the next day. Sean continued to bemoan the loss of his car. Aaron knew the convenience and fun of the car was only part of the story. It was just another memory from Sean’s earlier life that was now gone. But they both knew from their trip east that a car was useless now in the fractured landscape. They’d be hoofing it once again. They found a backpack for Brittany at a local sporting goods store and filled it with clothes and toiletries. They tried to make it as light as possible, but it was still heavy. They knew that, over time, her body strength would increase and wearing it would become second nature.

  Brittany proved hardier and more resilient than the two men expected. The first three days on the road, they made a lot of time with nary a complaint from the girl. Aaron couldn’t help noticing her attachment to Sean, rarely leaving his side. He had become her protector, her brother, her father, and—he had a sneaking suspicion—someday her lover. He didn’t see Sean spurning her attachment, and he seemed to be reveling in it to some extent. The world had changed, thought Aaron. What had once been acceptable—or not acceptable—in society was moot now. You took love where you could find it. Moments of enjoyment and happiness were few and far between.

  Their journey was uneventful. They saw small groups of people, but no established settlements. Aaron made sure to ask each group they ran across if they had heard of his brother, but to no avail. Everyone was yearning for some missing or dead loved one, so to be asked about yet another one was given little importance.

  A month into the trip—somewhere in Ohio—they came across a larger group. At almost a hundred people, it was nearly a town. However, that was where the resemblance ended. They had taken over a trailer park near the shores of a lake. The people weren’t doing well, though. They had food and shelter, but little more. It was what they didn’t have that was so obvious. They had no spirit. It broke Aaron’s heart to see so much misery in the group. Especially the children.

  They were greeted with little enthusiasm and the three were just going to pass through quickly, but Aaron felt he should ask the question anyway. They were talking to a small group of the residents and Aaron asked if any had ever run across a Ben Jordan. They looked at him blankly.

  Then one of the men said, “Don’t know anyone’s last name anymore. The only Ben I’ve heard of was the half of the couple, Ben and Lila.”

  Aaron looked at Sean. “Yeah,” he responded. “He was with a girl name Lila. You saw them?”

  “Hell, no. But I’ve heard the stories. Everyone’s heard the stories.”

  “What stories?” Aaron wanted to shake the guy to get him to talk faster.

  “This couple, Ben and Lila, helped a bunch of people. Lotta bad folks out there. Rumor is they killed a lot of them. A dozen or more.”

  “Hell Sam,” blurted out another man, “way more than that. Three or four dozen’s what I heard.”

  “You’re kidding.” Aaron looked at Sean in amazement. “My brother?” He turned back to Sam. “Do you know where they are now?”

  “Disappeared, is what I heard. There one minute, gone the next. Maybe dead. Don’t know. Some people say they’re angels from heaven. Fucking idiots. No angels on this piece of shit earth.”

  They talked for a while longer, but got nowhere, so they thanked him for the information and were on their way.

  “Should we go look for him?” Aaron asked that night when they had set up camp. Brittany had already fallen asleep. He answered his own question. “Yeah, I know. Stupid thought. If they are alive, they could be anywhere. Can you believe that? My brother?”

  “We don’t know how much of it is true, but it’s got to be based on something,” said Sean. “I say we keep going. This country has become very small. Somewhere down the line some more information might come our way. Let’s deal with it then.”

  *****

  They finally holed up for the winter in a house someplace in Iowa. Like the house Brittany had lived in, it was set
up with a wood stove and would provide them with a safe and warm place away from the elements. They stocked it up with massive amounts of canned food from a supermarket that hadn’t been too badly looted, as well as stacks of books raided from the local library. They each had a bedroom, but within a month of moving in, Brittany no longer stayed in hers, preferring instead to bunk with Sean. Aaron understood and didn’t begrudge his friend his chance at female companionship.

  For him though, it was going to be a long winter.

  *****

  And it was. It was a hard winter weather-wise. Blizzard after blizzard piled the snow to the point where leaving the house became almost impossible. They cleared a path to their makeshift toilet, an area that started out as a ditch that they would cover with dirt. But once the snow came and piled on it, they just kept an area as clear as possible and did their business on top, shoveling it away as it froze. They also had a path to the detached garage, where they stored their wood.

  Other than the weather, it was an easy winter; lots of reading and game-playing. Aaron was lonely for female companionship, and seeing that, Brittany—after talking to Sean—offered to sleep with him once a week or so. While he appreciated—and was tempted by—the offer, he declined. Somehow, it felt like pity-sex. And besides, Sean and Brittany had a real thing going. The last thing Aaron wanted to do was screw up their relationship or his friendship with Sean.

  Finally spring came, and brought with it an early heat-wave, allowing them to finally leave their winter prison by early April.

  By mid-June, having maneuvered around countless ravines caused by the earthquake, they found themselves in the rolling hills of western Nebraska. They still hadn’t really decided on a destination, but there was something freeing about the journey, so they had pretty much decided to keep heading west until they reached the ocean.

  It had just gotten dark and they were building a fire at their campsite among the rocks, when Brittany exclaimed, “Hey, what’s that?” She pointed to a gap in the hills.

  Aaron and Sean had also just seen it.

  “Fire?” asked Sean.

  “I don’t think so,” answered Aaron. “It’s different somehow.”

  “Man made,” said Brittany. “You know, like street lights or lights from buildings.”

  “Holy shit, you’re right,” said Aaron. “Could it be that someone has figured out how to get the power back?”

  It was too late to investigate that night, but early the next morning they were on their way, full of anticipation. Late in the afternoon they came over a rise and were presented with the source of the lights. Far to their left and right were the remains of a small city, mostly burned and obviously abandoned. In front of them, though, on the banks of a river, was a much smaller town, newly built. It only consisted of a few dozen houses and trailers and some buildings that comprised a makeshift downtown. Next to the town, on the edge of the river, was a small power plant with smoke rising from a smokestack. The town had power!

  An hour later they walked down the main street. They hadn’t seen any vehicles, but the buildings definitely had lights. It wasn’t heavily populated. Based on the number of houses, Aaron figured it couldn’t have a population much more than a hundred. However, people were milling around, talking and laughing—such a far cry from the trailer park they had run across in the fall.

  A man approached them from one of the buildings and held out his hand.

  “I’m Joe Baxter,” he said with a wide smile. “I’m the mayor—such as the office is—and official greeter. It’s always nice to see new people walk into town.”

  He swept his arm around to indicate the town, and said, “Welcome to Paradise.”

  Chapter 22

  This was all too much. My brother might be alive? It had now been over seven years since civilization had disappeared, and almost eight since I last saw Aaron. I felt guilty. I missed my family big time for a few months after the event, until our life got so complicated my family was pushed to the background. Over the years though, I thought of my parents on a regular basis. The memory of Aaron, however, had begun to fade long ago. He was six years older than me and hung with a whole different crowd. Somehow though, he always found time for me. And maybe that’s why I was feeling guilty. He was a good brother. Shouldn’t I have spent more time missing him?

  There was precious little information Rindell could give them about Aaron that would be of any help, so he took them on a tour of the ranch. Ben barely heard or saw anything. The only other time he had ever been this stunned was when Lila informed him that she was pregnant with Katie.

  They stayed about an hour. It was mid-afternoon and they wanted to get back before dark, so they said their goodbyes and started on their way. Ben was quiet for much of the ride home, still trying to process the information.

  “Daddy, why are you so quiet?” asked the ever-observant Katie.

  Ben didn’t know what to say, so Lila jumped in and explained it to Katie as best she could. She finished with, “So Daddy hasn’t seen his brother in a long, long time and he misses him a lot. Maybe he’ll be able to see him again someday.”

  They arrived back at the stable as the sun was starting to set, and it was dark when they got back to the house. Ben lit the stove and the kerosene lanterns while Lila gave Katie a bath and got her ready for bed.

  “Do you think he’s still alive?” Ben asked Lila when they were in bed and Katie was long-since asleep.

  “If he really did survive the initial event, I’d say there’s a good chance of it. After all, he had skills that most people didn’t—certainly a lot more than we had. On the other hand, I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”

  “That ship has sailed. Until I find him, or find out that he’s dead, I think I’m going to always be looking. Wherever we go, I’ll always be studying faces and asking people if they’ve seen him. How could I not do that? He’s my brother.”

  *****

  Over the next month Ben joined with other residents to make trips by wagon to Springfield and to the Joplin area in search of canned goods and other supplies. Although both towns had been picked over, mostly by the Monett residents on previous trips, they still found stores that had been untouched. When he wasn’t on scavenger hunts, he was chopping wood or hunting—with Katie when she wasn’t in school. It left him little time to think about finding his brother or traveling to Yellowstone. Lila was working just as hard smoking meat and fish for the long winter ahead and getting the house prepared. She tried chopping wood, but her lack of vision on one side threw off her aim. Finally she gave up and left it to Ben.

  As busy as they were though, they knew that, come spring, they’d be back on the road. The Monett community was pleasant, but it wasn’t for them.

  When winter arrived, it came with a vengeance. Luckily, their years in the forest had given them the know-how to prepare for it. But as ready as they were, the sheer ferocity still managed to catch them by surprise. Every week brought at least one snowstorm—oftentimes there were multiple storms. With the snow came the wind. While the streets remained almost free of the snow as the wind whipped across the plains, the buildings had many feet of drifts running up their sides. While Ben was constantly shoveling out his doors, some residents never saw their front doors all winter if their houses were faced toward the constant oncoming wind. They used back doors—and sometimes even windows—to go in and out.

  Katie moped most of the winter. There was no way to get to the stables to spend time with Scooby. Her horse had become her best friend, and she missed him dearly.

  Early one morning about mid-winter, Ben and Lila were awakened by a frantic knocking at their front door. Their neighbor Mary was screaming that her roof had fallen in and Ellis, her husband of almost forty years, was inside. The snow had gotten too heavy in the section of roof over their living room. The residents came out in force to clear away the snow and debris. It took several hours, but they eventually reached her husband, who had been crushed to death by a be
am.

  Another neighbor took in the distraught Mary. A week later, the heartbroken widow slipped out in the middle of the night during another round of snow and wind, and disappeared into the storm. They all looked for her the next day, but with the knowledge that they wouldn’t find her alive. In fact, they never found her body at all.

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve seen that happen,” said Brian later that day over a cup of coffee at Ben and Lila’s home. “Two winters ago, it happened twice.” He took a sip, then continued. “Surviving the event was one thing—sheer luck for all of us. Living through the hardships and dangers that followed was a major accomplishment. There probably isn’t one person alive today who didn’t come close to death more than once in the last seven years. Despite all that, what have we really achieved? Life is still hard and it will always be hard. We just approach it with varying degrees of contentment—I hesitate to use the word happiness. I’m doing okay and you guys look like you’re fine. But not everyone is fine. There are some who wake up every morning wondering why they even bother to go on. And then it finally hits them—they really don’t want to go on. Wandering away, especially in the bitter cold where you can lie down and just never wake up, seems the least violent way to call it quits. The only thing keeping Mary and Ellis going was each other. With Ellis gone, this became an even uglier world for Mary.”

  “And maybe that’s why the Nebraska town appeals to some,” put in Lila. “Just the thought of electricity gives people a little hope.”

  “No matter how much they hope for it,” said Ben, “the world will never be like it was. Some random electricity won’t change that.”

  There wasn’t much to say after that and Brian soon left.

  “Are you happy?” asked Lila, once Brian was gone.